Boeing Unveils 787 Dreamliner

Civil aviation designers seem to be moving in two different directions. Airbus with its huge A380 is offering commercial airlines the capacity to carry six to eight hundred people at a time. Boeing has just countered with a “green” airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, which is 20-30% more fuel efficient that comparable aircraft. Both are trying to address the fuel cost component of air travel. The aircraft that wins out here will set the tone for air travel for the next 30 years.

The fuel component is the great “unfixed” cost for air carriers. When crude was at $15 a barrel (not that many years ago), there was one profit model. At $70, there is a far different one. With aircraft already purchased, airlines can only do so much. The long-term approach to coping with this difficulty is in buying aircraft that get more miles per gallon per passenger (and some prudent hedging of fuel costs the way Southwest Airlines has done).

Airbus has focused on boosting the number of passengers per flight with the A380. The behemoth does burn more fuel than a 747 per mile traveled, but the key to profitability here is carrying double or triple the number of paying passengers for, say, a 50% increase in fuel expended. Getting 600 people from A to B with one plane, thus, can be more fuel efficient (or for airline accountants, less costly) than getting them there using three planes.

Boeing is taking a different tack, reducing the amount of fuel that needs to be burned to get the same number of people to their destination. If the same routes are covered with the same traffic handled, the 787 will cut fuel costs by around a quarter. This is less disruptive to the overall business model. No schedules need to change to get the 600 passengers flown. No special runways are required to land the thing. Tie-ups at baggage claim or customs remain as they are now and are not compounded by more people arriving at once.

Qatar Airways, which operates an all-Airbus fleet in the Middle East, may set the tone for others. It is the first customer for the 787, having bought 30 of them for US$5 billion total. It also bought 80 new Airbus mid-size long-range aircraft at the Paris Air Show last month, and it has recently ordered 5 of the A380s. It's hedging its bets. The test of which approach works best won’t happen on someone’s computer but in the skies.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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